A Belated Wedding Gift
by xLadyxLibertyx
Summary: Ever wonder how an "electric company" came to take over Gaia? Occurs between Chapters 3 and 4 of "One Stroke: Part II." Vincent Valentine's origins before Hojo got his hands on him are here too.


Vincent looked at his son across the table from him

**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII. I depend on my daughter, xXxValentinexXx, and on Bjanik for all my information on the subject.**

**A/N—Did you ever stop to consider how an "electric company" came to take over Gaia? Or the effect monopolization had on the people in the company's way? This piece originated from such considerations. It occurs between "Proclamation in Wutai" and "Other Consequences of Sex." I've pulled it off to the side since it has little bearing on the overall story but tells us about Vincent Valentine's origins before Hojo got his hands on him.**

"Tessa," Vincent looked across the dinner table on the balcony of his son and daughter-in-law's apartment and caught her eye. "I would like to have these claws removed. Can you perform such a surgery?" Vincent's left 'hand' closed with a metallic snap. It had been two weeks since the death of Londo Shinra and life at the company had seemingly returned to "normal"—or at least what passed for normal at Shinra.

The spoonful of dessert, which had been on its way to her mouth, stopped halfway as Tessa stared at her father-in-law.

"Did I just hear you say you want to look into having a more normal hand?"

"Yes."

Tessa turned her head to look at her husband with a surprised expression. Sephiroth was clearly as surprised as Tessa was by this turn of events. She set down her spoon. She had wondered why Vincent had asked to join them for dinner then had barely said a word while they ate.

"Perhaps. May I see your hand?" Tessa extended her hand for Vincent's who laid it in her palm. "Zack, would you bring that floor lamp out here from the living room?"

"Of course." Zack, the fourth person at dinner, retrieved the lamp, but then took up station with Sephiroth looking over Tessa's shoulders. Vincent squirmed slightly under the three-way scrutiny.

Tessa gently turned the clawed hand over and back several times. Vincent wondered what she was seeing.

"Do you remember how Hojo did this to you? There are only a few references to you in his notes. Primarily you seem to have been an irritation to him rather than a major project."

"No, I don't remember. I think he kept me sedated for several years. I may have been a failed project he put in a coffin in anticipation of my eventual demise."

"Yeah, you weren't easy to get up." Zack offered his two cents. All three glared at the First Class Soldier.

"Well, the metal grafts go clear to the bones of the palm of your hand. I can't really tell from here whether you even have bones in your fingers any longer, although you certainly have motor control so probably most of your soft structures are intact." Tessa paused to look Vincent in the eye. "Why have the claws removed now? I would have thought if you had wanted them removed you'd have had it done shortly after we left Nibelheim." Tessa wasn't surprised when Vincent didn't answer her question.

"Well, it may be possible to remove them. I'd like to bring in Dr. Wilkie from Junon to have a look as well. He did the microsurgery on Rude."

"Yes, of course. Whatever you think best…" Vincent nodded, retrieved his hand from her grip, and seemed to retreat back into his shell. Vincent hadn't expected the news to be good, but clearly the possibility existed.

"Vincent, was there something else you wanted to talk about?" Tessa leaned her elbows on the table, bent toward him, her mako-bright eyes boring into him. Vincent leaned away.

_Vincent?_ Sephiroth was joining the act. Vincent could feel Sephiroth pushing at the wall in his mind. Not ramming his head, just pushing—looking for a crack, an explanation.

_Well, that's what I get for inviting myself to dinner, I suppose_, he thought. Vincent gave a little push back. Sephiroth winced ever so slightly. _Ha._

"Sephiroth, Tessa, are you free tomorrow morning?" Vincent asked. "There's something I'd like to show you. I think you'll like it… Meet me at the motor pool tomorrow morning about 10:00. We're going for a drive."

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Sephiroth rapped quietly on the frame of Tessa's open office door. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes." Tessa already stood closing the windows on her computer with the mouse, watching as the computer turned itself off. "Do you have any idea at all where Vincent is taking us?"

Sephiroth gave a small laugh, "None, and I have tried several times to get around the blocks in his brain to find out. He's keeping me out... in fact he's doing so in a very determined fashion."

Sephiroth reached for Tessa's coat on the wall behind the door and helped her on with it, his fingers working up into her soft hair. She turned to face him with a soft smile on her face. "That feels good… Why don't we reschedule with Vincent and take the morning off?"

Sephiroth smiled slightly at her suggestion, his other hand straying to her waist inside her coat to pull her close. Perhaps he would pull out her blouse from the skirt and slide his hand over the skin of her back… He could feel himself stirring at her nearness… Tantalizing.

"I _really_ wish we could, but we did promise Vincent we'd go with him. If he's keeping the blocks up this hard in his brain, then he must be very serious about whatever it is. Shall we go?"

Tessa looked into Sephiroth's dusty green cats-eyes and trailed a finger down his temple, "How I love your eyes. I hope our son looks like you."

"You do?" he said with a note of alarm. "Why would anyone want to look like me? _I_ hope our _daughter_ looks just like you. Although I do like my perfectly pointy bangs."

Tessa laughed gently. "Well, knowing the strength of the Jenova genes in your body, I rather expect whether it's a boy or a girl, our child will be tall, and strong, with silver hair and green eyes. That will be beautiful."

_Are you coming or not? I'll have the car outside shortly._ Sephiroth caught the exasperated tone in his father's thought.

_Just a minute. We'll be there… Maybe…_

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Vincent drove a long, black, six-door sedan with very dark bullet-proof windows up the ramp from the underground motor pool and stopped in the Shinra courtyard exactly in front of his two passengers-to-be.

"Executive protection transportation, I see," Sephiroth muttered to Tessa. "I suppose that for two 'executives' like us the car is appropriate, but it shouts 'important' and 'target' to would-be terrorists."

Tessa looked at her exasperated husband and smiled gently.

"Please get in," Vincent got out of the car to open the door for Tessa. She gave first Vincent then Sephiroth a questioning glance and a raised eyebrow. Tessa wondered for at least the fiftieth time what was going on. Her whirring brain was working overtime, but it was finding no answers. Sephiroth at least was willing to go along with Vincent's request. She maneuvered her bulk into the back seat of the limo. At least she'd been able to give up high heels for the duration of her pregnancy – that helped with getting in and out of cars. Sephiroth sat in the back with her after having set Masamune on the opposite bench seat.

_What are you going to do with that thing when the baby comes? You don't want the child to cut himself on it, do you? _Vincent took a shot at his son then felt Sephiroth's startled reaction.

_Blades can be hazardous to small children? Just drive…_

"Where are we going?" Tessa asked. "Vincent, if you don't tell me, I'll probably ask, 'are we there yet?' at least once a mile."

Vincent shook his head and looked at her in the rear view mirror. "Not yet."

Tessa and Sephiroth looked at each other in surprise when they headed out of Midgar into the mako-blasted countryside.

"Does this whole area look like this?" Tessa sounded a bit distressed to her husband.

"Hm. Yes, pretty much. There's not much to see in any direction for about ten miles. Nothing lives out here, except your occasional monster."

"I hadn't realized it was like this. I guess I've only flown into and out of Midgar since I've been here." Tessa suddenly felt a bit nauseous. "I hope we don't have to stop the car, so I can be sick."

Sephiroth grimaced slightly. They had hoped Tessa's nausea would improve as the pregnancy advanced, but so far nothing had changed. "It's still bad, is it?"

"Yes, unfortunately, and I've only been sick twice this morning." She sighed. "Here!" she reached for her husband's hand to lay it against her stomach. "Can you feel that?"

Sephiroth started. "Is that the baby kicking?" His hand jumped away from her as if he had been shocked.

Tessa laughed quietly. "Yes, silly. That's our child making his presence known."

Sephiroth's hand crept back to lie very lightly on her stomach which jumped again.

"All right!" Tessa half expected Sephiroth to give an arm pump there in the car—though his hand did not move from her stomach this time. Instead he bent to lay his ear next to his hand.

"What do you hear?" she laughed.

"Hm. What was that? You'd like to come out and meet your mother?" Tessa raised an eyebrow. She'd never heard her husband say anything so whimsical before.

"Oh no. Please tell the baby for me that he has to stay in there at least another four months. No coming out too soon. Okay?" She stroked her hand down Sephiroth's hair wishing again that they _had_ stayed home, Vincent or no. Sephiroth turned his head to look up at her and smiled slightly. He began running his hands over her thighs, up under her skirt, then raised his head to kiss her full lips lingeringly.

"The back of a car, like two teenagers?" she whispered.

"Sounds good to me. I've never been in the back seat of a car with anyone before."

"Me either. By the time I was a teenager I was a university student. Study, study, study…" Tessa laughed and kissed her husband back.

"Un hunh…" Sephiroth reached to a panel on the door and raised the dark glass to cut them off from the front seat.

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Vincent shook his head at the quiet conversation in the back seat and at the rising glass. He wasn't surprised. The whole situation reminded him, painfully, of another occasion in his life. "Sephiroth, you were conceived in the back seat of a car." He was careful to speak the words quietly aloud and not send them telepathically to his son. He wasn't ready to deal with that subject—just yet. He slowed the car to give the couple some time. Soon there would be diapers, and 2:00 a.m. feedings, and frazzled nerves. Let them have some time together… He would certainly have cherished more time with _her_…

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Tessa had started to doze with her head on Sephiroth's shoulder, the dark glass returned to its lowered position, when Vincent pulled off the main highway onto a dirt road.

"What? Where are we?" she looked at her husband.

Sephiroth shook his head, "I don't know, but look at that!" He pointed out his side window to an arched iron entryway over the roadway bearing the word "Valentine" above their heads. Tessa gaped.

Vincent exhaled what might have been a chuckle, lowered his window, and began pushing buttons on a key pad inside a box on a pole. The metal gate before them swung open shrieking for oil. He turned to look at the couple in the back seat, "This is what I wanted to show you. You wanted to know about the past after all and this is part of it. This is the Valentine family estate. If you like it, this can be your new home. The house hasn't been lived in in years, but I've looked it over, and I think it's livable with some work. Call it a belated wedding gift, if you wish. See what you think." He looked at his son to see Sephiroth's mouth slightly ajar. _Ha. Caught you off guard._

_Hmph. I guess so. I suppose I should tell you I don't like surprises… This is where you went when you borrowed my car last week, wasn't it?_

_Yes, I drove out here to check on the house… and it doesn't surprise me that _you_ don't like surprises... _I _don't like them either._

Vincent drove the car down the long roadway to the house. "I present Valentine Hall," he glanced into the rear view mirror at Tessa. He could nearly hear the wheels turning in her head as she dealt with possibilities.

"Vincent, how far are we from Midgar? How big is the house? How much land is there?" She could just see the house coming straight at them. She had glimpsed a tennis court out her window, and they were now passing what was obviously a multi-car garage on Sephiroth's side of the limo.

"We're about twenty miles outside of Midgar and generally upwind. Occasionally you will get some of the pollution in this direction, but it's usually pretty diluted when that does happen. I'm sure you've noticed the real grass and trees growing here. The Valentine estate consists of about a square mile of land give or take a few acres—the main road cuts off a small piece of one corner. The house sits roughly in the middle of the estate. It's about five thousand square feet of livable space with a less 'livable' addition on one side—you'll see shortly. There's also a small house elsewhere on the property that the caretaker and his wife, who was our housekeeper, lived in when I was a child. You can't see it from the main house, though, and I haven't checked on it. There was the beginning of a barn for chocobos, but I assume you're not really interested in raising chocobos."

Tessa laughed. "Probably not."

"Not even a chokie for the children?"

"Yikes! Please don't even put that idea in their heads…" Tessa's voice trailed off. Children always asked their parents for the small chocobos at some point in their young lives. Something else to look forward to, she supposed.

Vincent stopped the car before the front door of the house, and opening the car door for Tessa, handed her out. "My goodness," was all she said at the sight of the large brick structure. Vincent chuckled.

"Once upon a time," he paused almost laughing at how he'd begun his story, "the Valentine family was quite wealthy. We owned most of the transportation industries on the middle continent, caravans and later railroads, that sort of thing, along with much of the coastal shipping, and had done so for centuries. Lucius Shinra, that was Rufus' grandfather, took all that away from my grandfather early on in his march to control life on Gaia. What you see here is all that remains of the Valentine 'empire.'" He glanced at Sephiroth, his son, heir to the once vast Valentine properties. He rather thought Grandmother Eunice would have approved of her latest descendants.

Sephiroth shook his head, the silver moving in waves across his back, his hand in Tessa's, "So your part in the takeover was also a personal revenge?"

"Hm… Yes. I suppose it was. My grandfather helped Lucius Shinra with financing, guided his young company, and transported Shinra's products to market at reduced rates. When Lucius bought him out, it broke Grandfather Julius's heart, and he died shortly thereafter. Grandmother Eunice had been the toast of Midgar before then. She felt humiliated when my father, Grimoire, had to go to work for Shinra. She died when I was about seven, still cursing the name of 'Shinra.' I was always glad she didn't live to see _me_ work for Shinra, as well." Vincent paused. "Here. Let me show you around."

Vincent stepped up to the front door, and turning the knob, he stepped inside. "Have to add a lock to the front door… Probably several," Sephiroth thought, then he realized something. He had already made up his mind to take Vincent up on his offer. Here was something he had always wanted—roots, belonging. He glanced at Tessa, taking her arm to help her up the front step to the landing, and wondered what was going through her mind on the subject.

"OH… MY… GOODNESS!" Tessa exclaimed stepping into the entry hall looming before her. Slick-looking polished white marble floors iced away from her to the foot of two dark-wooded spiral staircases at the opposite end. Portraits, presumably of Valentines past, covered the walls, along with the occasional firearm and hunting trophy, all tastefully small, she noted. She left her arm in Sephiroth's hoping she wouldn't slip walking on all that marble, though until she had become pregnant she'd never been clumsy.

Vincent laughed to himself at Tessa's reaction to the hall. "Over here," he lifted his clawed hand toward a long cherry table, "is the dining room, where my parents had their dinner parties." He walked through the dining room between the table and a large fireplace above which was a prominently displayed family portrait.

"Vincent, who are these people?" Tessa's voice froze Vincent's tour. He glanced at the portrait then quickly away.

"Those are my parents, Grimoire and Genevieve Valentine, and my brothers, Leon and Jacob, and me. They're all gone now." He walked away from the fireplace and on up to two glass double doors at the far end of the dining room. Tessa caught Sephiroth's eye and looked concerned at her husband, who shrugged, but Vincent had now resumed his tour.

"Out there are the formal gardens." Turning right Vincent entered another room walled in bookcases up to chair height with more portraits above. "This is _th_e library and withdrawing room." Sephiroth and Tessa trailed behind him agog, Tessa just catching Vincent's emphasis on the 'the'—had that meant there was more than one library? With a wave of his right hand, Vincent said, "Back there is a guest bath… And back here," he crossed a narrow hallway with shelves of linens and serving pieces, to another room, "is, of course, the kitchen." The kitchen was full of butcher block-topped tables and counters. Racks covered with huge pots hung from the ceiling. Vincent turned to the right and crossed the long room. "You'll need to do some pipe work back over here and upstairs." He pointed to stained walls that indicated broken water pipes. In the corner near the discolored wall before some large windows was a breakfast nook with room for six people to sit. "We generally ate our meals here rather than in the formal dining room."

Leaving the kitchen via a second door, Vincent crossed the service hallway to re-enter the entry hall, this time near the spiral stairs at the back of the hall. Crossing the entry hall and heading the direction opposite the dining room, he announced, "This is the rec room. Or 'rooms' as the case may be." Taking two long door handles in his hands, he opened the double doors and stepped back allowing the couple to enter first.

"Oh, my goodness," Tessa laughed, "'oh my goodness' seems to be all I can say, Vincent!" She and Sephiroth walked inside through a narrow hallway with a shooting range on the left.

Sephiroth glanced back at his father, "I'm not surprised to see one of those here." Sephiroth raised his chin to look at a target still on the far wall, "Pretty good group on that target. Yours?"

"_Pretty_ good!?... Yes, it's mine."

On the right was another door that looked like it might open into a large closet. Straight ahead the ceiling suddenly rose up two stories high into a gymnasium that clearly ran the width of the house.

"Vincent!" Tessa exclaimed and wandered on into the gym.

"Here's something else you shouldn't be surprised at either, Sephiroth." Vincent stopped to enter a combination into a key pad on the wall on the right and opened the "closet" door. "Here, you first."

Sephiroth looked about the room, now revealed to be a gun safe. "Nice… Very nice." Shallow drawers lined two sides of the room up to about waste level. Across the far end was a countertop with reloading equipment and supplies. Above the drawers on all the walls were guns: handguns, shot guns, rifles, machine guns, assault rifles, with many calibers and sizes.

"I'll rearrange those, so you'll have room for swords. I don't imagine you'll want them lying about with a baby around." Sephiroth froze. That was Vincent's second reference to blade safety around children. Vincent noticed Sephiroth's expression. _Yes, holding grandchildren promises to be a two-_handed_ operation…_

Vincent also noted that Tessa had finished her examination of the gymnasium and had wandered away back into the entry hall to look at the portraits.

"There's something else here, just for _you_ to see." Vincent spoke quietly, then pushed buttons on another keypad on the countertop to his left, and began opening individual drawers for his son's perusal. Sephiroth looked away from the drawers' contents giving his father a questioning look.

"If the need should ever arise, this is all yours too. Even on two Shinra executives' salaries, at some time in the future, you might need ready cash. _Lots_ of ready cash, that is. Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies,… rings, bracelets, necklaces, even a couple of diamond tiaras. All are readily convertible to cash. Just ask any good Turk to help _convert_ them if I'm not around. Grandmother Eunice wouldn't begrudge you the von Trott family jewels, though Tessa doesn't seem like the kind of woman who would ever wear much of this sort of thing…"

As he had once before, Sephiroth held out his hand to Vincent. Vincent took his hand gingerly, not flinching this time as he had on that other occasion. "Thank you for all of this, for talking about the past, and thank you for helping ensure _our_ family's safety. No one knows what the future may hold. These might help keep us all safe, you know."

Vincent had caught the emphasis on the inclusive "our" Sephiroth had used and smiled slightly. "Yes. If the need ever arises, I'm sure you'll put them to good use." Vincent paused. "Well now, did you see the gymnasium? There's plenty of room for sword swinging out there. I imagine Tessa wants to see the upstairs before too much longer, however. Shall we join her?"

Sephiroth nodded, "Indeed. She'll be more concerned about the bedrooms and family rooms than most of what she's seen so far. Upstairs then."

Tessa raised her head and smiled at the return of her husband and father-in-law to the entryway. "You'll have to tell me who all these people are, you know," she waved a graceful hand to indicate the portraits around her in the hall.

"Yes. For now, let me introduce you to just one. My grandmother, Eunice Claudia von Trott Valentine." He walked across the entryway and stood before a large portrait hanging exactly in the middle of the space between the two staircases. A beautiful woman with up-swept dark hair had been painted standing on the right-hand staircase, her right elbow and forearm lay gracefully upon the banister. She dripped in diamonds ("a tiara, no less," Tessa thought) and wore an elegant red off-the-shoulder ball gown and elbow-length red gloves, a lock of curling hair hung before one shoulder. Her face sparkled with intelligence and humor, but with a look that said you did not cross her lightly. "A face rather like her grandson's," Tessa thought, "her great-grandson's, too, come to think of it."

"Grandmother Eunice. Aristocrat. The formidable _grand dame_ of Midgar. Patron of the arts. The toast of the town. Belle of the ball… She'd have ripped Lucius Shinra's heart out with her bare hands if only she could have gotten close to him. How my Grandfather Julius ever managed to get her to marry him, I'll never know," Vincent paused turning back to Tessa, "Would you like to see the upstairs now?" He turned toward the right staircase to begin the ascent to the upper story.

From the landing at the top Vincent turned left to take the hall to the wing above the dining room side of the house. On his right he opened the door to the master suite—spacious with huge walk-in closets and a fireplace. The sliding glass doors leading to an outside balcony, however, were cracked, and the floor was littered with dead leaves.

"Out there is a balcony with a nice view at sunset. Over here in the bath are more broken water pipes, so in all the house this room will take more work than much of the rest of the house put together."

Back in the hall Vincent waved toward the front of the house. "There are four rooms above the dining room and library over there. There are two guest rooms and my parents' actual libraries and offices with access to the roof."

"Oh, so there was another library." Tessa laughed.

Returning to the hall near the landing Vincent paused in the doorway of another room. "This is the music room. It was my mother's favorite room in the house."

"What was her name again, Vincent?"

"Um? Oh. Genevieve. Genevieve Valentine. She was a budding concert pianist before my grandmother Eunice introduced her to my father Grimoire." Vincent slowly entered the room walking toward a baby grand piano. He stopped and bent over to pick up long papers that lay on the floor.

Tessa and Sephiroth looked at each other. Vincent had suddenly seemed sadder than usual. Vincent set the papers on the piano's music rack and sat on its bench. Using his right hand he began to play from what Tessa could now see was a musical score. The melody was slow and haunting in a minor key, but suddenly Vincent stopped and sighed.

"The piano's badly out of tune, and the piece needs two hands to play." He stood up abruptly and walked toward the door. Tessa reached out to stop him, laying her hand on his upper arm.

"Vincent, is this why you asked me about repairing your left hand?"

"Yes. And after all, how can I hold grandchildren like this." Vincent left the room.

When Tessa made to stop Vincent again, Sephiroth caught her eye. "Let him go." The couple followed Vincent into the hall where he turned left into the last room on the hallway.

"This was our playroom." Inside were neatly arranged toys standing on shelves along the walls with larger pieces standing around the room on the floor, a rocking chocobo and electric car among them. Vincent walked across the room to a train set sitting on a tale in the far corner,

"I suppose this is the last bit of 'Valentine Transportation, Inc.' left on Gaia. Look." As Tessa bent to examine the train cars, she could see they were complete with "Valentine RR" logos.

"Vincent, how wonderful!"

"I rather hope you have a boy otherwise all this stuff will have to be put in storage."

"Nonsense. Whether _this_ baby is a boy or a girl, there will be children who will want to play with all of this at some point, I'm sure."

Sephiroth too examined the trains then took his wife's hand and smiled at her. "A real childhood."

"Yes."

"Come. We're nearly done." Vincent left the playroom returning to the hall then turned toward a secondary hallway that seemed to run above the shooting range. "Over there are my brothers' and my rooms along with baths and closets. That sort of thing… All structurally sound." He turned toward the landing to the staircases instead.

Since Vincent seemed reluctant to enter the hallway, Tessa and Sephiroth headed toward the boys' rooms. The rooms on the left seemed to be the storage space and baths Vincent had mentioned; on the right, however, were normal teenaged boys' rooms. Looking in one room, a recruiting poster for the Turks faced the couple. Suddenly Vincent was in the room ahead of them, ripping the poster from the wall with his clawed hand. A scrap of the paper slipped from Vincent's metal fingers and slid under the edge of the bed. Vincent shook his head then bent down and lifted the edge of an old comforter to retrieve the trash. He jerked startled, "Oh my. Would you look at that!"

Sitting back on his heels, Vincent turned to the couple. "Tessa, Sephiroth. I think you'll be able to give this a good home." Rising Vincent reached out and handed Tessa a fluffy object, a toy moogle doll. Tessa took the moogle and impulsively hugged its former owner.

"Thank you."

Vincent froze, then visibly relaxed and awkwardly patted Tessa on her shoulder with his right hand. Stepping back he said, "If you want the house,… which it seems you do,… then perhaps I could take over your apartment. I imagine there will be any number of times one or the other of you will need to stay in Midgar overnight. Your place has plenty of room for guests. I can stay close to Tseng and keep busy."

With a glance at his wife's beaming face, for the second time that day, Sephiroth extended his hand to Vincent. "We accept."


End file.
